


All systems go.

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: Settle in and find your home [9]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Pepper Potts and her team of badass ladies, Pepper runs a super-efficient company, Tony's terrible people skills, hypercompetent women, ladies in the Tower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 08:38:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19081447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: Some scenes from the night of Bucky's return home.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place concurrent with the end of [hidden far away (prologue)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1690658).
> 
>  **ADDED LATER** : Hahahah so regarding chapter 2: it seems my avoidance of all things in the actual MCU post-TWS means that I missed that a "Jimmy Woo" showed up in _Ant-Man_. 
> 
> Randall Park (of about ten years ago) and Adrianne Palicki are good body-models! However the two I write here were shaped OVERWHELMINGLY by Celeloriel in the early days of the development of this verse (aka 2014 immediately after TWS came out) and characterisation-wise will only match up with anything else, well. Coincidentally. 
> 
> I literally haven't seen _Ant-Man and the Wasp_ and have no intention of doing so, so that portrayal of that character has no relationship with Jimmy Wu as I write him. 
> 
> I shifted to "Wu" because our backstory for Jimmy is such that 吳 would be much more likely to be transliterated that way than "Woo".

When the deep snarling siren of the Emergency ring-tone on her phone jars Eva out of dreamless sleep, it is rapidly followed both by Mono complaining loudly and also by Helena's voice from the other room saying, "Jesus Christ what the hell is that?" 

So it's rather a good thing that Eva has always woken up quickly and completely, bar illness or sedation, and that she does so now. She hits the touch-point for her bed-side lamp (an excellent illustration of why she _got_ a lamp that turned on and off at a touch, without having to find any kind of switch) and grabs the earpiece, tapping the button and saying, "De los Santos." 

On the other end is Maria Hill's voice, which says, "A driver is en route; the cold-water situation just developed in an extremely unexpected way." 

Eva blinks as she sits up and pushes her covers away, staring at the wall across from her. _The cold-water situation_ is Rogers' search, because at one point he and the missing man had shared a cold-water flat in Brooklyn and it was both unremarkable enough that it didn't immediately suggest anything, and yet distinct enough that it sticks in the memory so that, for instance, when one is wakened out of deep sleep it still triggers the right thoughts. 

On the one hand, Maria is saying _developed_ and _unexpected_ , rather than _exploded_ or _catastrophic_ ; on the other, it is - Eva glances at the clock - not quite midnight and there is a driver _on their way_ rather than a _please come as soon as possible_. Which means the kind of emergency that doesn't care if one shows up in one's nightclothes, but definitely cares if one shows up immediately. 

"I'll meet them downstairs," Eva replies, and neither of them bother with goodbyes: obviously whatever's happened is not something Maria wants to discuss on a phone connection and there's no point in wasting time. 

Helena is standing in Eva's bedroom door in her housecoat and slippers now, eyes squinty in the light and her hair all in the rags needed for the curls she wants for the publicity shoot tomorrow. She's frowning deeply. "That is the most horrible noise ever," she says, pointing in the direction of the bedside table where Eva's phone is on its charger. 

"That's the idea," Eva says. She's already out of bed and yanking her oversized sleep shirt off over her head. She grabs clean underwear and a bra and says, "Some kind of emergency, but no, nothing you need to worry about, and I apologize for the level of asshole he's going to be." She jerks her head at Mono, who is already standing on the bed meowing at her very indignantly for the crime of ignoring him after having disrupted routine this badly. 

"S'okay," Helena says, yawning, "if I have to I'll lure him into the cat-room with the duck from last night and leave him there." 

Which is entirely fair: Eva prefers to give Mono the run of the penthouse because he likes sleeping on her pillow in between patrols of the rooms to make sure nothing's wrong, but after she'd got him she turned the linked master-and-nursery setup she'd previously just used for an extra guest room and library into a giant cat enrichment room, which is also where his litter lives, and it's definitely not going to hurt him to spend the night in there. 

He'll complain about it, and he might make a mess, but that's why those are cat-rooms and have laminate flooring now. 

Eva drags on the pair of black jeans that are closest to hand, draped over her bedroom chaise; Helena says, "Here, catch," and Eva looks up in time to catch the black Egyptian cotton shirt tossed her way, picked up from the back of the chair by the door. It's a good call: it pulls on fast and while this is clearly not a situation where attire is the first consideration, on the other hand if Eva does have to do anything moderately-official without having time to come home, between the quality of the jeans and that top she probably won't have to send someone to buy a stopgap. 

And she has full formal backups at the office, of course. 

Helena also tosses her the wide-pendant amber necklace with the woven band, and then the earrings, while Eva pulls on trouser socks. There should be a pair of simple pumps by the door, along with her purse; she picks up her phone and the amber-ended hair-stick from beside it on the bedside table and makes a gesture at kissing the air over Helena's cheek on her way past and down the wide central stairs to the door. 

"You're wonderful," she calls as she pulls on the first jacket to hand and slips her shoes on, "I love you, good luck at the shoot, say hi to Edgar for me," and hears the sound of Helena's response as she pulls the door closed behind her, if not the actual words. 

She also hears the sound of Mono's paws hitting the door and the loud _mrao!_ , but is moving to the elevator before the sound of the scratching starts. 

 

The guard in the lobby - it's Tomás, tonight - looks a little bit surprised to see her, and in a totally friendly way says, "Exciting night?" because he's been in this job for years and knows she doesn't usually rush out the door at midnight, and also long enough that they are genuinely friendly. Eva flashes him a considered "such is life" kind of distracted smile. 

"The joys of an international company," she says, and he makes an _ahah, gotcha!_ kind of gesture. 

"I wish you good coffee," he tells her, and she makes a joking salute as she sees the SI car pull into the building's driveway and hurries out to it. 

"Good morning, Ms de los Santos," the driver says, politely; it's a young woman Eva doesn't recognize on sight, and she glances at the clock. 

"Oh, god, it is officially morning, isn't it," she says, as a wry acknowledgement. "Good morning!" 

The drive doesn't take long, but it's almost frustratingly uncomfortable anyway: there's nothing to actually _do_ , since none of her files for something like this will update until she gets into the Tower's closed network radius, and so she's actually reduced to pulling out the sequestered mini-tablet she keeps in her purse uses for normal social media in order to keep from chewing her fingernails. 

Running over various plans and contingencies won't actually help: the pre-planning that's possible is all well-established and she knows the relevant pieces by heart, and since they all go in wildly different directions depending on the circumstances, it's not worth letting her attention get dragged down one path in case it needs to go down the other afterwards. So instead she checks to see exactly how stupid Twitter is already today. 

It at least gives her the joy of internally snickering her way through a thread about the scariest things you can hear from a judge that laypeople would find innocuous, so there's that. 

 

The moment she's within the Tower's network her phone starts to vibrate both with file updates, document deliveries, and also the alert for the fact that Maria is calling her. 

"I'm on my way up," Eva says, as she gets out of the car at the underground main door and waves a thank-you to the driver and a hello-but-I'm-busy to the StarkSec guard stationed at that door, who nods respectfully back. 

"Barnes arrived at Rogers' apartment half an hour ago," is what Maria says, as Eva steps into the elevator and finds that the appropriate floor is pre-selected, which is convenient. 

". . . well shit," Eva says, because she's in the elevator, the door is closed and it's moving, and she feels that more or less sums up her entire response.

"As yet no indications of violence or incident," Maria continues. "Rogers contacted us with the news, and he's also contacted Wilson and I assume the third number is the last one Natasha gave him as it's a burner out of Romania." 

The elevator delivers Eva to Maria's floor, where one of the office support staff is standing to both open the door and to hand Eva a proprietary tablet and a mug full of sweetened Turkish coffee with cardamom, for which may the young man be forever blessed. 

When Eva arrives at the central hallway to Maria's offices, the walls have shifted transparent. It's a technology still in beta-testing and development, but one that Maria had jumped on having installed in her inner set of offices, where she, Monique and her other key subordinates worked. The largest obstacle before it would become customer-ready was expense and complexity of installation, which isn't an issue for here. 

As yet there's only Pepper, Maria and the new "receptionist", whose job Eva is well aware resembles much more closely "communications officer", and that makes sense: even Monique lives further away from the Tower than Eva and a couple of the others significantly more so. 

And Eva's not _surprised_ by Tony's absence, so much so that she suppresses amusement when Pepper's first words as Eva steps in the door are, "I sent Tony back to bed before someone murdered him." 

"What was he doing?" Eva asks. "Specifically."

"Insisting that everything is fine, it will all be fine, Steve's perfectly safe, we're all stupid to worry," Pepper says, with a long-suffering look that turns into a yawn, "and then getting tetchy at any scepticism. Unfortunately the tetchy was making him a fucking five year old about everything else, so I told him to shut up and go back to bed and I'd talk to him in the morning." 

Maria glances briefly upwards, eloquent in silence. There are also the really, really good sugar-dusted doughnuts from downstairs on the low table by the window, and Eva goes to grab one and sit down. "The alphabet soup know yet?" she asks, not bothering with much more preamble. 

"I doubt they could track Barnes up to the point he arrived at Rogers' place," Maria replies, "so they're working on the same timeline we are at best, and that's assuming they've got agents on-the-ground in Rogers' neighbourhood. And if they're doing that then they already consider Rogers a _very_ high level risk and are using their best, because there's no sign of that as yet - my next step is contacting operatives I know are good enough to find out." 

She glances at Eva with slight amusement and adds, "They're legal to operate in the US." 

"I wouldn't dream otherwise," Eva replies, blandly, and doesn't add _you just told me about them in as many words, after all_. She's already assigning alerts to the team she'd assigned to this response-project, who are also primed to expect them - from here they'll go to either the Tower call operators or they'll go to the direct-phone alerts, depending on what any individual employee has set up. After which, if the employee doesn't acknowledge the alert, they'll go to the call-system. 

"It'll take at least twenty-four hours to get them in place," Maria continues, "and we may get threatening noises before then, or we may not - it's not possible to tell what level of surveillance they've got on Wilson given he's literally working in a Federal job, or how compromised that burner of Natasha's is or isn't. JARVIS is maintaining exterior surveillance via any wireless cameras in the area, and location surveillance on Rogers' phone - " 

"But part of Tony being a pain in the ass is he refused to let JARVIS use Captain Rogers' phone for anything more than location surveillance," Pepper finishes, resignedly. "That's how we got onto the topic in the first place. He's not entirely wrong on _that_ one, in terms of . . . " Pepper trails off and gestures with one hand to indicate _things in general_. "But." 

Maria looks slightly exasperated, and part of Eva doesn't blame her: this is in fact part of the definition of an extraordinary situation. But the other part of her also actually agrees with Tony, although she'll leave that unspoken for now. It's not necessary to have the argument, as Tony's already preempted them. 

"Our preliminary responses to any movement on their part are ready as of now," Eva says, or rather confirms and reaffirms. "And the preliminary work on the proceeding round is as done as it can be before we know which direction they're going to break." 

"JARVIS currently says basically nothing's happened in the building that's noticeable since Rogers went in with his friend," Pepper says. "There's still lights on behind the blinds, but there's no sign of any disturbance, and minimal activity visible." 

"And since while there is a chance the guy could have got enough of a drop on Rogers to kill him without it even causing a thud, it's really slim," Maria says, "we're going to operate on the assumption that this means things are peaceful for now. And if he is dead, we'll know in a day or so. And that's current status." 

Out of the corner of her eye Eva sees movement, and turns her head to see Monique in yesterday's pants and blouse, with blue flats, her hair bundled up and wrapped in a blue silk scarf with pink and yellow flowers on it, and her own coffee in her hand. Eva has never previously seen the younger woman without flawless makeup, but isn't entirely surprised to discover she's one of those women who doesn't really _need_ flawless makeup and just looks that damn good anyway. 

As Monique comes in the door she says, "Good morning! Holy shit!" in an acidly cheerful voice that is somehow very cheering. 

"Cap still alive?" she asks, grabbing her own sugar-crusted doughnut and coming to join them. 

"So far, as far as we know," Maria replies, dryly. Monique makes a gesture of _well that's a blessing_ , and pauses to swallow coffee. 

"I'll get on waking up Mockingbird and Wu," she says, "last job they're down as taking was in Florida so could be worse there." 

Eva's tablet is in the process of letting her know that three quarters of her alerted team are on their way, and of those remaining half have acknowledge receipt of the alert and just haven't left their homes yet, and the other half are in the process of trying alternate contact points. 

So it's time to decamp to her own office and also make sure there's food and coffee up there. 

"I'm going to go make sure Tony doesn't touch anything," is what Pepper says, clearly having similar thoughts about it being time to move into the next phase. "And then get the rest of the week readjusted. Keep me in the loop and please make _very_ free use of the catering and auxiliary facilities." 

"Just tell Yolanda that our people are exempt from her wellness concerns for the next few days," Maria says, in a voice that isn't actually as sour as she's pretending it is.


	2. Chapter 2

There are all kinds of downsides to the post-SHIELD, post-Insight world, but in the interests of focusing on the positives, Bobbi figures one of them is that life now includes a lot more beaches and tropical drinks. 

She's always known, in a vague sort of way, just _how_ lucrative freelance private security and espionage work is. Everyone did. But it's been less than six months and she still more or less lets Jimmy handle the bank accounts because she keeps staring at the balance and going _what the fuck_. 

At this point she already started college savings funds for all three nieces and nephews, because she couldn't fucking figure out what else to do with it. 

This trip had just been a consult: basically showing up to spend three days proving to the government-adjacent biochemical company that actually their security protocols were terrible and they should be ashamed of them, and also fix them _really quickly_ given the shit they work with, holy Christ. 

The one nice part is that whether or not they follow up on the report is not her problem. She's not sure whether the company will or not: the suits in the room when they'd given the report and laid out the flaws had all looked slightly ill, and the thank-yous had all seemed sincere, but kind of subdued. 

It would definitely cost them to bring the improvements into play, but it'll also cost them if they don't. 

She and Jimmy had decided to take the weekend and lounge in a beach bungalow because why _not_ , and so it's especially annoying that she has insomnia. 

Not surprising. Just annoying. 

The little bungalow is the kind that's sweet, cute, quaint, and all the kinds of shit you'd see on someone's Instagram feed about living the Simple Life, the kind that's so simple you only need two on-site provided maids per bungalow to make it look picture perfect every morning. In the silver-sheen of the dim middle of the night it looks like either the set for a horror movie, or a thoughtful family drama with a feel-good ending. 

Bobbi pulls on the super-thin cotton wrap she bought earlier from a beach stall because it's just cool enough that the pj-shorts and tank-top she sleeps in aren't quite enough clothing, and wanders through the little house. 

Eventually she pours herself some of the strawberry-infused water from the fridge - closing her eyes and turning her face away from the interior light to keep her night vision - and goes to the back sliding door. 

She's sitting out on the porch, because when you're mostly acclimated to Montana winters it is currently _plenty_ warm here, and there's little enough light pollution to actually see some stars. When Jimmy comes out, looking sleepy in his boxers and t-shirt, Bobbi wrinkles her nose. 

"Tell me I didn't wake you up," she says, and he shakes his head and comes to sit beside her on the little porch steps, putting an arm around her waist so she can lean on him. 

"No," he sighs, "I was never asleep either." 

Bobbi echoes his sigh, leans her temple against his shoulder. "Remind me we're going to get used to this," she says, and she means _everything_. 

She means not working at SHIELD. She means there being nothing to replace SHIELD. She means the world _looking_ like it does, working like it does, and their new place in it. 

She means everything she's shaped herself around for the last fifteen years and Jesus, it's actually been fifteen years and now she feels fucking old. 

Now that she's thought that, somewhere Melinda May is rolling her eyes and doesn't know why. 

But there really isn't anything to replace it. 

They'd talked about that for a long, long time, batting around the ideas and coming to the conclusion that no: nothing was going to be like it. Nothing is going to be close enough, and the things that aren't quite close enough would eventually twist in the wrong directions. 

It's why they didn't actually go follow Maria Hill to Stark Industries, although Bobbi can absolutely see why the people who did follow her chose to. It's probably going to be the closest thing, because organizations change around Maria, not the other way around. But it wouldn't be close enough. Not for her, and not for Jimmy. 

So they didn't. And she'd taken that fine, and said she understood. Bobbi doesn't know: maybe she does understand. 

It can be very hard to figure out what's actually going on behind Maria's blue eyes. Bobbi can see enough to know there's a lot she doesn't see and nobody else does either. 

And that's not fair, of course. Because of course Maria gets it. Bobbi's only thinking this shit at all because the world got turned upside down and now she's busy questioning things she shouldn't half the time, because obviously she missed a lot of shit she _should've_. 

Jimmy handles that part slightly better than she does. Is just a touch better at fatalism. He insists its a trade-off, because she's slightly better at the absolutely brazen "no way that should work but hey, look, it's working" kind of plans than he is, and it balances out. 

But it comes around to: there's nowhere that'll be enough the same, and they just have to deal with that. 

They should be grateful they're both alive, and that they do _have_ the option of using what they're good at in a different way, and they don't have to go learn how to be totally different people. 

Bobbi is pretty sure that would be the bad kind of much, much harder. Actually she might not be able to do that without going crazy. Even the two weeks or so after they came out from the cabin and stayed with her dad were starting to - 

Bobbi'd never _previously_ identified quite so hard with that scene in _Mr and Mrs Smith_ where Jane's at the normal-people Christmas-party with a face that so clearly says _someone please stab me oh god please_ , and then she did, and that was what told her it was definitely time to ignore her dad's sad-eyes and get the hell to a big urban centre and back to work. 

And here they are. And it is better. And they'll get used to it. Supposedly. 

"It's only been a few months," Jimmy says, words a harmonizing counterpoint to the whole stream of thoughts in her head. "And we spent two of those hiding in your dad's cabin. We're still well within the normal period to be struggling with a massive life-change." 

"Right," Bobbi agrees, the word mostly a sigh. 

After a beat, Jimmy says, "So now you tell me," and it's at least funny enough to laugh at. 

They spend a few minutes in a comfortable silence, staring at the water, small waves rolling up the beach, before he adds, "I don't know if you've noticed, but I think your aunt might be about to try kidnapping us if we don't give her at wedding date soon." 

Bobbi lets out a small groan and hides her face in his shoulder. "Oh my god I'd say we should elope but she'd make it even worse," she says, and maybe the despair is a bit overdramatic, but she figures she's entitled. 

He's not wrong, though. Aunt Tess hadn't been super-patient about the whole thing _before_ Insight changed the whole damn world, and now it's like she feels like evil crypto-Nazis are potentially behind every door and she's got to get Bobbi safely married before they blow up the planet. 

Not that Aunt Tess would be able to articulate exactly _why_ , and long before she gave up trying she'd fall back on _but it would've made your mom so happy!_ and Bobbi might have to scream. 

"She loves you," Jimmy points out, bland and solemn, and Bobbi snorts. 

"Yeah and she's got a lifetime of 'I gave birth to five boys because I couldn't stand the idea of not getting the daughter I really wanted' surrogate-mother-of-the-bride crap, _and_ 'my baby sister died and I have to make sure her daughter turns out okay' crap, and Dad can't tell her 'no' and she doesn't _listen_ to me," she retorts, not because he doesn't know, but because she still feels the need to _say it_. 

Bobbi has no idea whether her mom would have cared: what memories she's got are hazy baby-memories of the wonderful warm centre of the universe called _Mama_ , and at this point she's more than wise enough to human nature to know it's impossible to tease out an accurate vision of the actual human being from her aunts' memories. Or her father's. Not their fault, but grief, love and loss make for one hell of a distortion. 

So maybe her mom _would_ have had her absolute soul set on a Proper Wedding, or maybe her mom could have been her ally and shield in the _can we just do this in the backyard in jeans_ fight, but what matters is that Aunt Tess and Auntie Barbara _believe_ it would've been important to her mother to have a proper wedding, so it's the absolute important crucial thing to them. 

She honestly has no problem with the idea of getting married. It's just the idea of Having A Wedding that's getting to her, and couldn't they just show up in front of some judge somewhere? Without the stupid dress-buying and flower-picking and speeches and the train and the flower-girls and the reception and oh god more speeches and Jesus Christ, the cake? Maybe? 

Answer: no, no they couldn't. Not without making her whole family sad. 

And the chances of Melinda being able to come actually play adopted-mother for Jimmy and curb Aunt Tess's excesses are slim. Assuming she didn't decide this was a perfect time for Bobbi to learn assertiveness with her own family, given she's got no problem with the rest of the world. And Melinda May might just do that. And she probably wouldn't be wrong. 

Damn it. 

Jimmy squeezes her shoulders and kisses the top of her head. "Just remember that if I wasn't an orphan you could do this twice," he says, solemnly. "And the second one in your third language." 

"There is no way any biological mother of anyone could be harder on my Mandarin than Melinda," Bobbi objects. 

"Okay, fair," Jimmy admits. 

It feels like he's not finished - that there's some kind of speculation building about what his mom might have been like - but then both of their phones are ringing at exactly the same time and it is a deeply creepy harmony. 

Jimmy's knee is still giving him grief standing up super-fast, so Bobbi's the one who scrambles to her feet and goes for them, charging as they are on the oh-so-quaint faux-distressed bedside table. But after staring at them for a second, she only answers hers. 

Because they're both showing _Maria_ on the caller ID. 

By now Jimmy's gotten up and come in too, and so he's in the room to hear Bobbi say, "It is two in the morning, please tell me it's not new aliens." And she _means it_. 

His face in response says it _all_ , and she tosses him his phone - which has by now stopped ringing - so that he can see who it is for himself. 

After glancing at the call log, he gives her the blank expression of non-expression (not _quite_ the same as the neutral face of displeasure, but in the same repertoire, because the non-expression means "I do not have any emotions about this I feel okay about expressing") and gestures for her to put it on speaker, then. 

She does, as Maria answers, "It is not new aliens," and also sounds like saying that is giving her way too much grim amusement. 

Jimmy also notices this and gives Bobbi side-eye; she grimaces and says, "Okay tell me it's not _worse_ than new aliens." 

"It's probably not worse than new aliens," Maria replies, and Bobbi both notes the word-addition _and_ the fact that it's in that exact same tone. 

"But it is two in the morning," Jimmy points out, in the neutral voice of concern. 

"And I'm calling because I'd love to offer you a consultation gig with a post-hoc settled fee with a chartered transport out of whatever you tell me is your current closest airport," Maria replies, in her best smooth phone voice, with the slightest edge of irony. 

Which translated means, _no I'm not going to tell you what's going on over a unsecured phone-line_ but also means _it's actually important enough that I don't care what it costs_ with a tail end of _yes I am_ without hesitation _trading on our actual interpersonal relationship on top of anything else_. 

What the ever-loving fuck could possibly going on. That is the only question. It's a loud question. And Bobbi figures also the only way to get it answered is to say "yes".

Bobbi looks at Jimmy. Jimmy looks back with _I mean do you want to have said no, two months from now?_ written all over his face, which is definitely a point. 

"Key West International," Bobbi says, because what the hell. 

Maybe this will end up feeling a bit more normal. That could help.


	3. Chapter 3

When Lia gets to the conference room at the Tower, there's basically a whole buffet of baked breakfast goods, along with cut fruit, coffee, tea, and one of the easy-to-use self-serve latte machines, and on the one hand it's definitely welcome and on the other hand that is a seriously worrying sign. 

Michael, who shared the elevator up with her because he arrived at the parking-lot entrance the same time she did, says, "Oh no, they're feeding us," in the most dreary voice you could expect to come out of a cheerful-looking heavyset bald dude with walrus moustaches. 

He calls them walrus moustaches, too. He's white, older than Lia by a couple decades, and senior by a lot, but she likes him. He's got a good sense of humour, but he's also pretty thoughtful. She never feels like she's banging her head against a wall when she brings things up with him, if she has to. 

And he'll come right out and say things like that, which is why on his locker he's got a nicely framed piece of embroidery or cross-stitch or something that says _everyone was thinking it, I just said it_ that one of the other StarkSec people made for him. 

It's usually true. He's usually pretty happy to bring something up for other people, too, if they don't feel comfortable doing it. 

"How bad do you think it is?" Lia asks, ruefully, as they join the queue for food and hot drinks. 

"It's four am and they're not only feeding us, they're trying to make it look special," Michael says, deadpan. "I expect aliens any minute." 

Michael had been around for the aliens. Had in fact been in Manhattan for the aliens, where Lia'd just been in training, which was over in LA at the time. Some of the others get irritated by how those who were in the Tower for the Battle of New York compare _everything_ to it, but Lia figures they're entitled. 

He glances around and observes, "A looooot of the big ex-SHIELD hitters here right now, too. Definitely aliens." 

He's not wrong about the ex-SHIELD people. This is one of the big rooms, the ones with multiple -seater square tables instead of one or two big ones, and there's at least sixty people in the room, with more trickling in. And at least half of those Lia can recognize as people Maria Hill brought in as her Special Hires after Insight. 

Mostly, Stark HR is stringent, and the hiring as blind as possible. There'd even been a big deal made out of it just before Insight, because some asshole wrote a huge long op-ed about how it was obvious that SI had "quotas" in its hiring and blah blah blah, because that particular round of the R&D interns, only a third had been white guys. 

Most of the time the company just ignores that shit, but apparently the head of HR in particular had been feeling pretty acid that day, as he'd released an absolutely scathing op-ed of his own in the same publication in response, which detailed how blind everything was, and ended with pointing out this was more what happened when you _actually_ just went with the best available out of the candidate pool. 

Then he'd added a twitter-thread about the ways in which the candidate pool itself was skewed in certain directions because the rest of the world _didn't_ run things blind like this and then a whole lot of assholes got at least temporarily kicked off Twitter for sending him death threats. 

So when after Insight the entire process got sidelined for a bit with specific people, there'd actually been a big company-wide note about it, about exactly why, about how long it would last and when it would stop, and then everybody got a _solid_ bonus at the end of the month. 

As far as Lia knew, there hadn't been any fuss about it. Granted, she'd been out on medical leave still when most of it happened, but she'd still been talking to work friends regularly, and the general opinion seemed to be skewed to _things that make sure our fellow employees are not secretly HYDRA agents waiting to kill us are good things_. 

There were definite downsides to that. For instance, at one point HR had to firmly ask everyone to stop trying to _help_ the internal investigations, because unlike random members of the company, the people assigned to actually carry them out knew things like "when it's actually legal to look at somebody's email" and "the difference between credible information and someone being a pissant who has a grudge against a coworker" and so on. 

The kind of thing that did make you want to bang your head on the table. 

At the same time, it meant nobody really objected to having the new people come on. 

But it all still means that there are a solid wave of people you can be pretty sure are ex-SHIELD even if you've never talked to them and never heard specifically, because their faces all showed up around the same time. 

Most of the people here are above Lia's pay-grade, but not all. She sees Lucinda from Communications and makes her way over to sit at the table with her, not at all surprised when Michael follows. 

You can identify the StarkSec people in the room because of the basic uniform, but you can usually identify the Comms people because not only are they just about guaranteed to be wearing a handsfree receiver in one ear, they also usually have two tablets and an independent portable wireless keyboard of some kind, and they're dressed as far towards the comfortable end of "business casual" that you can still call business casual. 

While StarkSec still totally dominates the room, there are quite a few obvious Comms people here right now, too. As opposed to PR, where there's only a handful, and you can tell who they are because they're kind of the opposite of the Comms people: most of them still within business casual, but at the "look smart" end of things. 

"You think it's more aliens?" Lucinda asks as they sit down. "Or crypto-Nazis. Or new terrorists." She has her tinted glasses on, because the light in here is set for everyone else, but she's got her hat sitting on an extra chair she's pulled over. That means she's either been told she won't be going home right after the meeting, or she's made a solid guess, because it's still almost pitch black outside at this hour. 

"Could be elves," Lia offers, kind of distracted by glancing around the room to see if she can guess from the overall composition of the room. 

"Those just count as more aliens," Michael says firmly, as someone Lia doesn't know recognizes him and comes to join them, taking the fourth spot at the table. 

Lia doesn't really listen to the not-at-all-serious argument about whether or not elves counted as aliens or something different as she keeps looking around the room, figuring out who she recognizes and who she doesn't. 

There's maybe a hundred people in the room now, and the trickle of arrivals has slowed to nothing; the crowd at the food is thinning, and most everyone's sitting down. The meeting starts at 04:30 and it's 04:25, so Lia can assume this is pretty much the group. 

As she takes in who's here, a kind of yawning feeling in the pit of her stomach starts, along with a weird tightening in her skin. At this point she's learned to recognize the feeling - annoyingly - as the very early signs that her now-oversensitized fight-flight response is starting to kick in. 

It's the edge of her body's response to fear, the kind that used to only show up in the guise of excitement at the edge of doing something like a roller-coaster, but since Insight has decided to add a new version to the repertoire. The kind that comes with an unpleasant faint sick feeling and a tension in between her shoulders. 

It's actually faint: she's had to learn to recognize it because if she doesn't, if she lets it work itself in without noticing it, then suddenly she's snappish and cranky and losing her temper over the stupidest things, while part of her is detached and watching her do it and going _what the fuck is wrong with me >_. She'd got all the way to snapping at Duke and wondering if she was going crazy before the nice psychologist lady gently explained that this is how traumatic stress marks people, and started teaching Lia how to catch it early. 

She has choices, if she notices it: she can maybe go away from whatever's making her edgy, or she can compensate for being edgy, or she can work on retraining her brain that no, actually, a waiter walking behind her doesn't mean someone's about to club her again. All that shit. But it requires noticing it and right now, this is definitely exactly that feeling showing up. 

And it's showing up now because she's pretty sure she knows why they'reh ere and she's pretty sure it's not aliens, actually. 

And oh shit. 

The majority of the room really is StarkSec and the majority of those are ex-SHIELD StarkSec, and while there are a couple of other people at her level here, there's nobody below it, she and the others on par with her are the _most_ junior people in the room, and Lia recognizes one of them as Randy Harworth, who was the other person who got seriously injured (but not killed) during Insight. 

Otherwise there's obviously Michael, and he used to be a Ranger; there's Lucinda, whose in Communications but her speciality is monitoring and analysis and she heads up her own team. Lia's not sure but she thinks the guy who came to sit with Michael - an older Latino guy with a thin rangy build - is in strategic physical threat analysis and also oversees multiple teams. 

Then there _is_ the way the ex-SHIELD folks are seriously overrepresented - Lia bumps up her initial estimate to three fifths, and a lot of them are the ones that went right into significant supervisory positions. Cal LeBron is sitting over at a table closer to the front, and he heads up all the external-to-facilities Security oversight; among the people here not from StarkSec but still from SHIELD is the head of Aviation and Aviation Dev, who is apparently terrifying, sitting beside LeBron with a very slight frown on her face. 

When it comes to faces Lia recognizes but can't put to names, there's also the big players out of the Spelunkers, including the French-Canadian chick who apparently the JARVIS system actually talks to, according to Lucinda, along with a _lot_ more people from Analysis and External Security. . . .

Basically the room is full of the people who run intelligence-gathering, information-dissemination, and physical fucking strike teams, with a solid majority of people Lia knows or suspects might have a specific reason to hate HYDRA more than most, or - 

Well. Care about Captain America more than most. 

So she's almost certain it's not aliens, at this point. And she really hopes it's less oh-shit than she's afraid of. 

Before she can finish wrapping her head around what she thinks it is, in words, the second set of doors opens and Hill comes in with Grant and De los Santos and oh yeah, this is definitely about Cap - 

As she thinks it, her phone buzzes the way it does when a work file is dumping or updating, and apparently so does every single other person's in the entire room - a mix of buzzing and various alert noises and people being startled by them, moving to the noises of people pulling out phones if they have the bigger-screen ones like her or other devices out of bags or inner pockets if they don't. 

"Good morning everyone," Hill says, over that, and the noise dies a sudden and abrupt death, not least because her voice has a kind of weird and mordant amusement in it. 

When the silence finishes falling, Hill says, "That was the delivery of the briefing materials I'm now giving you a few minutes to look through in the interests of saving myself explaining what's going on _again_ , and using the time to get myself more coffee. The file is called _Cold-Water_." 

Then she goes to join Grant by the food and the latte and the soft murmur of noise starts up again while everyone finds the Cold-Water files on their profiles and gets them open. 

It takes Lia less time than anyone else to look through them, mostly because it's exactly what she expects it to be and so she can skip the background because she's already read it and go straight to the current situation report.

And then stamp hard on the desire to say, _Ohhhhhh my gooooooood_ , even under her breath. 

Or the desire to demand, _Is Cap still alive? Are we sure?_

Muffled curses and intakes of breath are starting, as Hill makes her way back to the front of the room, flattens the podium-stand and puts her coffee cup on it. 

Beside Lia, startling the _hell_ out of her - and she's not alone on that one - Michael says, "Well at least it's not aliens," in the world's most fatalistic voice, putting down his tablet. 

Over on the other side of him, his buddy puts a hand over his face. 

Some of the tension in the room does, in fact, snap: there's a ripple of strangled laughter and suppressed snorts and people shifting with the need to displace their desire to snicker into something else. 

Michael's not from SHIELD, but he and Hill do apparently have a pretty friendly rapport; right now she's giving him the kind of censorious look you give someone you know isn't going to pay attention but you do still kinda need to reprimand them for the look of the thing. It's level and long, and Michael takes it with composure. 

"Thank you for that, Mike," Hill says, and her voice is so deadpan it's sardonic just because of that. 

"That's what I'm good for," Michael replies, completely unabashed. Lia has to hide a smile.

Actually, she's trying not to giggle hysterically: that is not the kind of look you want as one of the youngest people, especially the youngest women, in a very serious meeting. On the other hand, that is kind of fair: it isn't aliens, and probably nobody's going to start shooting _soon_. 

If you're measuring "soon" by hours and days, anyway. 

"Some of you in this room were aware that some variation on this situation was pending," Hill goes on, without dignifying that with a further response, and Michael leans back with his arms mostly folded, one hand twiddling the end of one of his moustaches as he listens. "Most of you were not, as this is more or less the definition of _need to know_. At a future point most of Security will probably be included in that ambit, but I'm starting with those of you present."

Lia really wants to glance around and see if she can guess who else knew, but that's probably a bit more rubbernecking than she could get away with, without being noticed. Michael obviously didn't; she can't tell with Lucinda, and Michael's friend seems to have total impassivity down to an art form. 

"If you are in this room at this moment, it is because I have confidence I do not have to reemphasize to you _how_ privileged this information currently is," Hill goes on, "or the severity of the consequences if it is misdirected at this time. The purpose of this meeting is to lay out how we're responding and what's going to be needed from you." 

Hill's hands are folded behind her back and her gaze is moving around the room as she says, "You should be aware at this point that I, Mr Stark, Ms Potts, and as such the company on their behalves, all consider the individual discussed in this meeting to be an innocent victim of persecution and a refugee, and one owed reparations by many governments and institutions including the government of this country, and we intend to act accordingly. Everyone in this room is also intelligent enough to have determined exactly why this is the case, even in such a brief period of time. If you have concerns that you will not be able to act in accordance with this position, you are asked to tender your resignation promptly." 

She surveys the entire room, and Lia finds herself holding her breath. Hill adds, "You will of course receive all severance and recommendations due to you." 

Absolutely nobody moves. 

After a beat, Lia senses Michael shifting next to her, but before he does or says anything, Hill goes on, "Alright then," and everyone exhales a little bit, "before Mike feels the need to break the tension again, ahead of where I start detailing our full response I'll take any questions that are burning such a big hole in your brains that you don't think you can wait." 

Lia can't quite tell how sarcastic that comment is or isn't. Hill says it in the kind of "deadpan" that actually _is_ apparently serious, and not a slight ripple of a cover - the kind that really doesn't tell you anything, instead of the kind that's its own message. She finds herself biting her own lower lip. 

"Do we know where the Black Widow is?" comes an immediate, crisp question from a black woman over on the other side of the room, a woman whose name Lia doesn't know - she's older, with greying short hair and looks like she works for Communications. The way she asks it says ex-SHIELD. 

"Other than with Hawkeye, no," and this time it's Grant who replies, from her seat at the side of the room. "However we can assume she is fully briefed and aware of the current situation and in a position to convey anything she feels necessary." And the woman Lia doesn't know looks satisfied. 

"Washington?" is the question that comes from the Aviation head, Ivanova, the whole question in one word. _She_ looks like the personification of that moment in that first _Lord of the Rings_ movie where Sean Bean says, _they have a cave troll._

"As yet there's been no indication of awareness or interest from any agency in the country," Hill replies, picking up her coffee, "and it's as close to guaranteed as it can get that they didn't know before we did." 

Next Lia hears someone actually ask, "And we're sure Cap's still alive?" and then realizes it's her and refuses to let her startled embarrassment show. 

She feels slightly better when it's obvious Hill has to work not to crack a smile, and it's not a condescending one. As far as Lia can see, it's _not_ an irrelevant question. In any way. Even if she didn't really mean to ask it. 

"As far as we can tell," Hill replies instead. "We're currently limited to external observation of his building but someone turned the light off in his bedroom window around an hour ago, and the best explanation of that is that he finally went to sleep." 

She looks around. "Anything else?" 

When there's silence and a few shaken heads, she says, "Let's get started then."


	4. Chapter 4

When she first comes back to the penthouse it's to a note from Tony saying he's gone down to the lab. 

It's probably not actually the best idea, he should probably go back to sleep, but Pepper can't quite face going to argue with him. 

Instead, she just goes back to bed herself, leaving the light on. 

Pepper honestly doesn't know what's up with him, which is unusual. She doesn't know why he's so adamant that everything will be fine, and so . . . offended, even, at any implication that it won't be. It feels a little bit like the way he was when they were trying to sort out Extremis, but not exactly like it, and the connection seems strange. 

But she also finds that right now she just cannot bring herself to face trying to figure it out, even here, lying in bed, sorting through the shit in her own head. Finds herself absolutely exhausted, beyond even what's reasonable for having just woken up a little before midnight to an adrenaline dump from hell and spent the next hour or so getting everything moving. 

Given that she's able to hand so much of it off to Maria and Eva and all the brilliant people she wouldn't even have if not for them, Pepper figures she's more exhausted than she has any _right_ to be. Especially considering the part where she can go back to bed now, and they won't be. 

There's just also nothing to do, specifically, that needs her. And hanging around over everyone's shoulder just smacks of micromanaging. And the chances of her being able to focus on any other work when her head feels like this are negligible. 

That leaves _go back to bed_ as the only sensible option. 

She doesn't manage any more real sleep, but she does manage a lot of tangled shallow dreaming, almost all of it . . . unpleasant. None of it makes any coherent sense, there's no sequence of events, no - for lack of a better word - plot. Just . . . images and feelings, her subconscious dumping out all the boxes of shit she's still fucked up about on the floor, mixing it around, and making a collage. 

The feeling of weight beside her in the bed makes her wake up with a jolt and a sharp inhale, and Pepper's eyes snap open to look directly at Tony's hip in his terrible pre-ripped jeans that are now also so old that they've got fully organic and well-earned worn spots as well. 

"Hey," he says. "Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you." 

He's got two cups of something: one a latte for her, the other one some of the cold brew that's his current obsession, heated up with - of all things - _butter_ in it. Pepper'd tried it, once, just so he couldn't claim she wouldn't even try it, and it had been vile. 

She's not even sure Tony likes it. He just goes through fads with his drinks. Sometimes just for fun, sometimes because he wants to prove that whatever people are claiming about it is bunk, and then sometimes because he actually likes it even if the claims are bunk. 

The latter is why they have a fridge full of flavoured vitamin water. Tony always makes sure to explain how much bunk it is and how he just likes the taste any time someone new sees him with it. 

"It's okay," Pepper says, sitting up and taking the latte. "Thanks." 

"So I may have high-handedly told your minion to reschedule your morning meetings," Tony says, conversationally. He goes on before she manages to swallow her mouthful of coffee and object, "Because while you will always be the most perfect and beautiful woman on the planet and definitely are at the moment, you also kinda look like crap and I'm pretty sure you feel like crap, and none of them were that important. You can still totally yell at me," he adds, quickly, "but - " 

"You're impossible," she tells him, giving him a glare of hopefully more obvious annoyance at him being obnoxious and less obvious fondness, and definitely not sudden _relief_ , and hopefully hiding the latter mostly behind the coffee cup. 

Tony tries, and fails, to look penitent. Pepper sighs.

" . . . but I do feel like crap," she admits, rubbing her neck with one hand. 

Because she does. 

Tony gives her a covertly knowing look. Or a knowing look that's trying to be covert. He says, "Yeah, you know those papers you made me read a while back, about the whole 'sensitization to -'" 

"Yes, okay, fucking fine," Pepper hears herself snapping, and she's already grimacing internally and trying to pull it back. 

She hates hearing that waspishness in her voice. She hates it even when it's deserved, let alone when it isn't - and right now, it isn't. She'll be the first to agree that "shrill" is basically something assholes throw at women just to make them shut up, but when her tone goes like _that_ she is, in fact, just fucking shrill. 

"Yes," she repeats, hauling herself back to something approximating reasonable. "Yes, okay, I know that this entire . . . .situation . . . " she waves the hand not holding her coffee to the side, "it basically counts as a PTSD trigger even when _nothing_ about it actually applies that much to me and all I'm doing is sitting around . . . _being aware_ of it. I know." 

Right now Tony's look is caught between sympathy and the look that says _how do I make Pepper stop having a sad face_. "Brains are shit," he offers, and she feels a laugh escape. 

The laugh is maybe a bit more shrill than she wants it to be either. She takes a big mouthful of coffee to try to cover it and then looks down at the mug, holding it in both hands. 

After a second Tony says, "Hey." 

When she looks up, he leans over to kiss her forehead, and then the top of her head, where he rests for a second. She can feel his breath in her hair. 

"It's gonna be fine," he says, like he actually knows that. And he doesn't, because he can't, because it's the future, but right now maybe she just wants to believe he does. 

Maybe she's just _fucking tired_. 

Maybe there's nothing she can do either way so she might as well take comfort in it right now, because it's not like it'd be any better if it blows up later and she was on knife's edge the whole time. 

"And you are the most beautiful and perfect woman in the world," Tony adds, seriously. "Even when you look like crap." 

He looks genuinely sincere when he says it, too; Pepper can't help it, ends up shaking her head and putting her face in her palm to offset the fact that she does laugh at him. 

Then she more fully embraces the truth of _fuck it_ , and she shifts around so she can lean up against his shoulder and he can put his arm around her shoulders. 

"Brains are shit," she sighs. He rests his hand against her head for a second, kisses the top of her head again, and then pulls out his personal tablet to fiddle with things while Pepper lets her eyes close and listens to his breathing. 

 

Pepper isn't aware of falling asleep until she's waking up to the sound of JARVIS' voice politely informing Tony that at current count Sam Wilson has attempted to call in excess of two hundred times, with no indication of stopping, given he has also called back twice since JARVIS started saying this, and _perhaps_ Mr Stark might want to answer and speak to him.


End file.
